Robert the Westie. My life. By me.

20. A birthday and a funeral, May 2000

The early months of the year 2000 passed as something of an anti-climax. In America, people were getting excited about an election, scheduled for November, that would see Bill Clinton replaced in the White House. Steve, clinging to his disenchantment with politics, contented himself with the assertion that the likely successor, George Bush Junior, would probably make an even more ineffectual leader than his father. That's a viewpoint you might wish to reflect on. 

He showed more excitement about something called, at the time, the "Dotcom Bubble". The excitement stemmed from his ownership of shares in a number of Internet-based businesses in which he had invested, until now with spectacular results. If, as is often said, "all good things must come to an end", April 4 is a date that supports the hypothesis. On that day the crash and rebound in value of these businesses, as measured on the New Yorks Nasdaq Index, had Steve jumping between the telephone and the television. The market graph plummeted and soared before his eyes, shedding more then fifteen percent of its value before recovering almost all its losses. I well remember Steve yelling down the phone at his stockbroker, who seemed frozen into the same immobility as a doomed rabbit in the oncoming car's headlights.

"For fuck's sake, Richard, if you can't sense the looming Tsunami, I can. You know what happens? First the water recedes and people scratch their heads and wonder. Then it rushes back with huge destructive force and washes them all away. I'm not about to be washed away, so sell the lot, right now. Got it?"

His decision to sell at the end of the day, at the point where the market had almost recovered its peak, saved him any huge losses. But he was just weeks away from a loss that would leave him saddened and beyond even my capacity for comforting the woebegone. 

My appreciation of human emotions may sometimes leave a bit to be desired, but even I knew that it would not be easy having a big birthday the day before his father’s funeral and the big birthday celebration on the day immediately after. The birthday itself, his fiftieth, was a real non-event. I had spent a quiet day at home. It was sunny and mild for mid-May, so I patrolled the terrace, barked at a few pigeons and crows that thought misguidedly that they might join me, and generally hung out. Steve arrived home at his usual time, gave me a rather cursory hug and opened the few birthday cards the postman had delivered that morning. He added them to the column arrayed along the top of the radiators in the living room.

The phone rang. Apparently it was Bernard, the concierge to the apartment building. He had somehow twigged that it was Steve’s birthday and was proposing to come up with a celebratory bottle of claret. This shared wine-tasting event had now become something of an established routine. Bernard, who had originated the concept, was genuinely clued up about wine and Steve was happy to devote a couple of hours a month to the consumption and review of a decent bottle of red. Plus, Steve knew it was smart to keep well in with Bernard for those inevitable little domestic crises where his official role might prove helpful. Bernard, in turn, appreciated the opportunity to flaunt his expertise in the company of an appreciative audience.

As often, there was a rather bizarre strand to the dialogue, Bernard feeling the need to share fond memories of his sexual conquests whilst serving as an infantryman in the Israeli army. Quite why those might be of interest to my Master was not apparent. Surveying Bernard’s rather shapeless bulk and far from handsome features, I was less than convinced that his reminiscences of Israeli maidens swooning in his embraces carried any credibility at all. Fortunately the war came to an end along with the bottle and Bernard took a rather wobbly farewell. I settled in on Steve’s lap, leaving only to greet Jason on his return from work, and enjoyed a couple of hours of average television. 

Conversation centred mainly on the next day’s funeral. Steve seemed calm, almost detached about the whole thing. As he explained it, he had said “Goodbye” to his father, Harry, over fifteen months earlier, when his slide into dementia had seen him hospitalised for the first of too many occasions. That encounter with his father on the ward, unable to recognise his son, unstable on his feet, unsure how to urinate, but desperate to do so, brought Steve face to face with his parent’s mortality and the likelihood of an indefinite bleak period looming for all the family. This likelihood had played itself out all too predictably over the ensuing months. The daily burden had fallen on Christine, Steve’s mother and Angela, his sister, for whom regular visits to hospitals and nursing homes formed the dark backdrop to their everyday routines. The stresses on Steve were self-induced, as he took on the task of rallying the spirits of his mother and sister, managing the financial pressures of the scarily huge nursing fees and visiting his father once every two or three weeks.